Faulconer preps for race against John Cox and Caitlyn Jenner

Bettering and rebuilding

Ex-San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer already relies on three statewide political committees to fund his hopes of becoming governor, either through this year’s recall of incumbent Gavin Newsom or 2022’s regular race against Newsom or whoever else may have the job by then. Now some political fat cats have set up yet another. Dubbed the Fund for a Better California, primarily formed to support Kevin Faulconer for Governor 2022, the committee has received “major funding” from Gerald Marcil and Brawley El Centro Group, LLC, per a June 8 online disclosure filing.

Politico reports that the fund has so far spent $1.2 million for broadcast commercials in Sacramento and Los Angeles, primarily to counter opponent John Cox’s investment of $4.7 million of personal money into the race and transgender Caitlyn Jenner’s free media exposure. Marcil, a mega apart-ment-owner from Los Angeles, has long been a Faulconer stalwart, coming up with $50,000 on March 3 of last year for the then ex-mayor’s independent expenditure committee, initially called Faulconer’s Ballot Measure Committee, Rebuilding the California Dream.

“The former high school wrestler is a moderate Republican and chairman of the fiscally conservative New Majority of Los Angeles. He donated $127,150 to conservative candidates and causes between 2015 and 2017,” wrote Steve Lopez in a November 2017 L.A. Times profile. Federal disclosure records show Marcil, listed as retired, kicked in $15,000 to the Donald Trump Victory Committee on October 3, 2019, and gave $5566 to the Donald J. Trump for President committee the same day.

Free obits

With print circulation continuing to shrink, the Union-Tribune has come up with a way to appeal to aging subscribers. “We know that publishing an obituary in the San Diego Union-Tribune carries a cost. But we also believe that this cost should not stand in the way of paying tribute to a loved one,” says a recent advertisement in the paper. “Qualifying, low-income households in San Diego receive a printed memorial notice in the obituary pages of the Local section on a day of their choice as well as a custom webpage link to legacy.com that they can share online.”

Eulogy for a labor union

Way back in June 1998, employees of the Union-Tribune, motivated by putative perks offered by then-publisher Helen Copley, narrowly voted to shuck off their labor union. “A source says that representatives from the Copley Press, the outfit that owns the paper, have gone all out to convince union members to ditch the guild,” noted an account published here at the time.

“Wavering union supporters are said to have been invited to everything from intimate coffee klatches with U-T chieftain Gene Bell to gratis Padres games, complete with a corporate box and plenty of free booze. The pitch is that 21st-century newspaper workers won’t need union representation because the U-T has turned over a new leaf and won’t fight hard against raises and better working conditions.” A couple of decades of dismissals, buyouts, and an embarrassing bimbo cable TV channel later, the now-much-diminished U-T ranks are watching with mixed emotions the de novo unionization of surviving southern California newsrooms owned by controversial hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

Employees of the eleven papers, including the Press-Enterprise, (Riverside), Orange County Register, the Press-Telegram (Long Beach), the Daily Breeze (Torrance), the Sun (San Bernardino), the Pasadena Star-News, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Whittier Daily News, the L.A. Daily News, and the Redlands Daily Facts, overwhelmingly voted to affiliate with the NewsGuild, according to a June 15 account by New York Daily News media columnist Keith Kelly. “Some of these newspapers are unionizing for the first time. This means their staff, who have endured years of low pay as their newsrooms shrank around them, will now have a seat at the bargaining table,” said Daily News reporter Josh Cain, an organizing committee member for the NewsGuild, which spearheaded the drive. “Unilateral cuts in pay or involuntary layoffs become nearly impossible to force through without a union’s approval, even if the company and union have not yet hammered out a collective bargaining agreement,” Kelly noted. U-T owner Patrick Soon-Shiong granted workers at his Los Angeles Times the same favor in 2019, but so far, at least, the same has not happened in San Diego, raising an already elevated anxiety level here.

— Matt Potter (@sdmattpotter)

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